Maple vs. Mahogany Starfire bass tone?

lungimsam

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Are there diffs in tone between the maple vs. mahogany?
My mahogany is a little burpy. Was wondering if the maples are less so?
 

fronobulax

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I've never knowingly played a maple Starfire. mgod says the maple ones are brighter and I am willing to parrot his opinion as fact. I'd guess "brighter" implies "less burpy" but we are using words to describe sounds so there is room for error :)

In acoustic, six string guitars it is almost universally agreed that maple bodied instruments have more treble and are brighter. A local dealer says there is a lot of variability in maple acoustics. When they are good, they are very good, but when they are bad they hang on the wall for years, so he won't accept a maple instrument without playing it personally.
 

Minnesota Flats

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So would an over-driven mahogany SF Bass tone be considered a "belch"?

Just want to make sure I have the terminology correct...
 

lungimsam

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Ok. Here are extreme descriptions:

Jaco is what I call burpy tone( (though he didn't play mahogbass)
Chris Squire is Maple-tone.

I'm not talking about their gear causing their sound I'm just talking about only what their sound was as an example of burp versus no burp.

I've had two mahogbasses and both are burpy and sounded like they shared an innate burptone. Gubson SG Bass and Starfire.
My non-mahog basses sound smoother, punchier, opener, woodier, less burp and less mud than the mahogs. So I was curious as to how the maplefires sound in comparison to their mahog bros.
 

twocorgis

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I've never knowingly played a maple Starfire.

You never played Greenie at one of the LMGs? Honestly, my maple SFII sounds brighter than my hog SFI did, but that's because of the bridge pickup more than anything I think.
 

mavuser

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the way my ears hear it, a mahagoany SF Bass (neck pickup) goes "boom" and a maple SF Bass (neck pickup) goes "pop." if that makes any sense. I'll always associate the mahagony sound with Phil Lesh and the maple sound with Catherine Popper. both are pretty well documented with recordings. it is probably more their playing than the type of wood. but thats what my ears hear. in the case of Phil Lesh his early SF bass was stock and then of course the Alembic modded one. But they don't sound so far off from each other. Phil is Phil. in the case of Jack Cassady, he may have had one of each? might be worth looking into. then you could hear the same player play both.
 

mellowgerman

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Jack's burst starfire would have been maple. The original one I'm not sure about. But either way, those basses both had different versatile electronics in them, plus it seems like he started playing around with inverting the pickup orientation once he got the burst one, so it would be hard to compare the wood of the two. Beyond that, wood is organic material and will vary greatly in density, weight, grain, etc even if it's technically two of the same type. For this reason I usually just let my ears decide once I play a bass whether or not it is too muddy, bright, woofy, clanky, bonky, raw, dull, slippery, zippy, or donky.
I will say though, if my mahogany 1970 SFB was any brighter in tone, it would probably end up being too clanky for my style of playing. I'd probably have adapted to it after a few weeks, but it felt/sounded just right to me right off the bat
 
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fronobulax

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You never played Greenie at one of the LMGs? Honestly, my maple SFII sounds brighter than my hog SFI did, but that's because of the bridge pickup more than anything I think.

I have no recollection of doing so. I'm thinking Greenie was at LMG III but Kurt's M-85-I and the GSR Starfire are the basses I recall playing outside of the factory. Given that a friend's green Starfire bass started me on the Guild journey circa 1970, I would hope I remembered playing the next green Starfire I encountered. Maybe we were mad at each other? :)
 

mgod

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I don't think of maple as brighter, but you might. They sound more solid, as in solidly-built. The mahogany basses sound a bit thinner.
 

wisconsindead

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Never played a Mahogany Starfire so I only know what a Maple Starfire is like. IME, I always feel like I am getting a more overdriven/more mid heavy tone than what I would like to get. I need to continue to experimenting with how I EQ, but part of me feels that this could be due to it being Maple and not Mahogany. I am going for that old Phil lesh sound.
 

ukulelelab

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I have a mahogany Westerly RI Guild starfire and a black dearmond starfire which I think is a laminated maple body but can't really compare the two because they also have different pickups.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think both mahogany and maple Guild starfire basses have the same maple (or spruce?) center block and that 3 piece mahogany-maple-mahogany neck construction. Is that right?
 
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